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We sure do sound like an expert at work when we educate our peers and stakeholders about best practices in our industries. After all, our executive teams are asking us to implement best practices. Our customers expect us to follow best practices. The conferences we attended attract us with sessions on best practices. We learn them. We implement them. We are praised when we do. But did any of us sit down and think, before we charged down best practices hill, "Is following these best practices right for us?"

Jay Acunzo, keynote speaker, founder of Unthinkable Media and author of the upcoming book, Break the Wheel: Question best practices, hone your intuition, and do your best work, helps us change how we think about best practices. Jay tells us, "We are starting to lose sight of how to make good decisions at work. We think it's about finding that best practice. But here's the deal. Finding best practices is not the goal. Finding what works best for you is the goal.

Big difference.

So this begs the question. How do you (your organization) find out what works best for you?

That is the question Jay helps us answer on this episode of Helping Sells Radio.

There is a first time for everything and this episode has two first times. First, we took Helping Sells Radio on the road to visit Dustin DeVan, founder and CEO of BuildingConnected at his office to talk about disrupting the construction industry with collaborative software. Second, Sarah E. Brown, founder and long-time co-host of Helping Sells Radio and director of content marketing at BuildingConnected, joins the show as a guest host AND a guest. She even took over the show open.

So, this was an exciting shows on multiple levels.

Riddle me this: How does a mechanical and aeronautical engineer with no aspirations to get into construction or technology, start a technology company for the construction industry? Think about that there for a moment.

In this episode you will learn how Dustin got into the construction industry, and while he was working in it, how he discovered that the construction industry is one of the most collaborative and also one of the most fragmented industries in the world. And with the gigantic number of construction projects around the world, organizing a seemingly endless number of contractors and sub-contractors and suppliers...none of them are connected in any modern collaborative sense. Dustin saw a need to create a network of contractors and sub-contractors to help all of these people work together better. For example, to help sub-contractor win more business, help contractors find the right sub-contractors, and ultimately help build better construction projects.

Here is the question of the day: "How far do you go to help a customer adopt your software?" I ask this question to many of our guests, and there isn't one right answer. As you can imagine, there are many answers. In other words, "It depends." My favorite answer now comes from Arjun Devgan, VP of global customer success and services at Percolate. His answer is to create a methodology for adopting the software and then publish an eBook describing it and also publishing tools customers can use during their implementation or digital transformation.

This is just like the question I received after my talk at CS100 Summit 2018 run by ClientSuccess about what courses one should start building if there is nothing today. The second course topic I suggested is to create a course on your rollout methodology. The idea is to help a customer with a proven process for getting up and running on your software. Presumably, you have such a process. Why not teach customers how to do it?

Percolate codified their process in "The Percolate Adoption Framework." Which anyone can download. Take a look. It will inspire you.

It is the the sixth and FINAL in the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack, so it is appropriate that we finish this series with Dave Blake's episode. The CS100 Summit Preparation Pack is a collection of past Helping Sells Radio guests who are also speaking at the 2018 CS100 Summit put on by ClientSuccess. When the agenda came out, it was glaringly obvious what a high level of speakers ClientSuccess attracts for their conference, we noticed five speakers were past guest of Helping Sells Radio. So we go together in the studio and decided to re-air all five of those episode just before and during the conference.

Enjoy the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack.

From Dave's episode:

One of the biggest obstacles to this customer-centric evolution is the buy-in of executives. According to Dave they believe in it because it's "THE" thing to do, however they don't invest the time and resources to make it truly happen. So they create CS teams within their organizations, yet they don't give them the ability or power to impact change within the organization to truly deliver a CS experience to customers. For example, if a product enhancement request comes from the CS team to the product development team, however there is no mechanism for the development team to prioritize the enhancement in their workflow. Worse yet, there may not be a way for the CS team to even speak to the development team to submit the request!

Only when executives break down the barriers between teams and departments and give accountability for CS to the right spots in the organization can it truly become a CS-focused company culture. "Until you turn the perspective outward, from outside to inside, that won't change," Dave said.

It is episode five in the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack. The CS100 Summit Preparation Pack is a collection of past Helping Sells Radio guests who are also speaking at the 2018 CS100 Summit put on by ClientSuccess. When the agenda came out, it was glaringly obvious what a high level of speakers ClientSuccess attracts for their conference, we noticed five speakers were past guest of Helping Sells Radio. So we go together in the studio and decided to re-air all five of those episode just before and during the conference.

Enjoy the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack.

From Kristen's episode:

How can B2B companies get better with data?

To improve their relationship with data, B2B companies should plan out their data collection processes from start to finish, advises Kristen. "Leverage the people they have in place in high-touch customer roles," she said. To augment what they're going to do with technology in the future instead of with people, she went on to explain.

Tech tools can help B2B companies increase their one-to-many customer relationships and reduce the amount of people involved in maintaining the relationship on a regular basis. That's not to say companies can reduce the number of CS staff, but rather, deploying their staff in higher value tasks and let the technology take over the lower value ones.

It is episode four in the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack. The CS100 Summit Preparation Pack is a collection of past Helping Sells Radio guests who are also speaking at the 2018 CS100 Summit put on by ClientSuccess. When the agenda came out, it was glaringly obvious what a high level of speakers ClientSuccess attracts for their conference, we noticed five speakers were past guest of Helping Sells Radio. So we go together in the studio and decided to re-air all five of those episode just before and during the conference.

Enjoy the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack.

From Nicolle's episode:

"Is it possible to monitor Customer Experience just by looking at data? Can we do that?" Bill was curious, since it can be hard to get customers to tell the truth when asking for feedback.

"In some organizations it's possible," Nicolle replied. "But I wouldn't recommend it." She explained that the data is only one part of the equation. It only gives you some of the information you need to create a positive CX for customers. At some point you'll need to speak to the customers to get the information directly from them. "You still have to talk to people to see what they're doing, how they're feeling, how they're using your products," she said. After all, you may discover your customers are using your products in a completely unexpected and unintended way that works!

It is episode three in the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack. The CS100 Summit Preparation Pack is a collection of past Helping Sells Radio guests who are also speaking at the 2018 CS100 Summit put on by ClientSuccess. When the agenda came out, it was glaringly obvious what a high level of speakers ClientSuccess attracts for their conference, we noticed five speakers were past guest of Helping Sells Radio. So we go together in the studio and decided to re-air all five of those episode just before and during the conference.

Enjoy the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack.

From Todd Eby's episode:

Customer Success is simple. But the simplest things are often the hardest.

Todd's customer success philosophy: "Understand what Success looks like to your customers. Make it your mission to deliver the direction, guidance and experience necessary for your customers to achieve their definition of success and you’ll be successful. It’s as simple as that. " Is this really simple? If it is, why aren't more companies doing it? Or are they? Every company is like a snowflake; there is no cookie-cutter approach. That's why companies struggle.

Although this is Helping Sells Radio Episode 85, it is episode two in the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack. The CS100 Summit Preparation Pack is a collection of past Helping Sells Radio guests who are also speaking at the 2018 CS100 Summit put on by ClientSuccess. When the agenda came out, it was glaringly obvious what a high level of speakers ClientSuccess attracts for their conference, we noticed five speakers were past guest of Helping Sells Radio. So we go together in the studio and decided to re-air all five of those episode just before and during the conference.

Enjoy the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack

From Nils' previous episode:

Nils has developed a model for building great customer success organizations. He calls it the 4 P’s of Customer Success.

People

Purpose

Process

Platform

We talked through this model and one of the most interesting parts of that discussion might have been the most controversial part of the interview. When it comes to purpose, a customer success team can have a primary purpose of satisfying customers or driving revenues, but it cannot drive both. Nils tells us we have to choose what to focus on. It is not to say teams cannot have both, but you cannot focus on both.

If you want to learn more about the 4 P’s of Customer Success, you can download the eBook that Glide Consulting has put together.

This is first in a series of podcasts in anticipation of ClientSuccess's annual CS100 Summit Conference. We are calling this series the CS100 Summit Preparation pack. To kick off the preparation pack, Nils Vinje from Glide Consulting and CS100 Summit speaker, is back on the show for the third time. We talk to Nils about customer maturity impact on what level of services you provide, what he's talking about at CS100 Summit, and you are much better off spending 30 minutes documenting a process rather than perform that process over and over from memory. Because if you take that process and multiply it across a team of customer success managers, you will develop a lot of inefficiencies and deliver widely varying customer experiences.

Even if you cannot make it to CS100 Summit 2018, this episode gives you a taste of Nils' talk.